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Crikey! Add 3G speed to the list of beer-brewing, croc-hunting, and bum-booting that Australians claim to do better, stronger, and faster than just about everyone else in the world. Or so an anonymous Telstra exec would have us believe:

Let's face it, Apple could teach the NSA a thing or two about security. Nothing like putting the fear of Steve into someone to get them to bear down and clam up. So, along with patent-watching and the occasional partner leak, about the only way to get any real information about what's new at Apple is via the good old help wanted adds.

Yesterday we mentioned in passing they were interested in a:

One of the hottest and most persistent rumors for the next generation iPhone is GPS, either built in or via BlueTooth hardware module (the former favored by techies, the latter by battery-lifers). One of the most constant and most rewarding (at least sometimes...) factors of the 2.0 firmware beta is developers raking through the code to find every new string and buried screen setting.

Put them together and what do we get? According to some "private" updates delivered to "select developers" (check out the screen shots), we get Geo Tagging!

The great thing about jailbreaking (and no, it's not this) is that a lot of smart people take a look at the capabilities of the iPhone and wonder how come nobody made a (insert program here) yet? And then go and develop said program.

Case in point: A p2p client for the iPhone

iSlsk, developed by Eric Castro, is Soulseek in native app form for the iPhone. It uses the Soulseek network to let iPhone (+iPod touch) users share songs with one another. Once the songs are downloaded, iSlsk imports them into your iTunes library for seamless playback. There is a lot of promise in such a program, imagine being able to download whatever you want, whenever you want.

Robert Scoble is an internet force of nature. Depending on your point of view, even odds that force is either life-giving rain, or death-bearing inferno. A former Microsoft evangelist who acquired a huge social network following that he's dragged with him through Facebook and Twitter to his current endeavor, Fast Company, he'll tell 5,000 friends he's crying over World Wide Telescope, 20,000 people he's QIKing it live (right now!), and an entire readership just what exactly his top 18 "Star-Spangled" iPhone apps. Let's see how they stack up (provided we can hurdle the prerequisite name-dropping in the intro, 'natch!):

Kinda.

Seems the strings to set 3G preferences exist in the code of iPhone 2.0 Beta 5, but the GUI screen that was rumored to surface it was a mock-up, a photoshop, a con-job, a bamboozle.

The process used to determine that the screen was less "shot" and more "not" is rather involved and -- quite frankly -- convoluted but the bottom line remains:

We're getting a 3G iPhone. That 3G iPhone will have settings. We, as yet, have no idea what form those settings will take.

Now bring on the next rumor!

Adding further fuel to the fire that Apple Inc. will drop the 3G bomb on June 9th, during CEO Steve Jobs' Keynote address, InfoSyncWorld is claiming that, once announced, the 2nd generation iPhone will be made available via AT&T roughly 10 days later, on approximately the 18th or 19th.

InfoSyncWorld further speculates on HSDPA, GPS, Mobile TV, and other oft-cited iPhone 3G rumors.

And with the time left before WWDC growing shorter and shorter, when it comes to speculation and rumors, no doubt we ain't seen nothing yet!

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What happens when your Sister Site, CrackBerry.com, manages to score a BlackBerry Bold on eBay? What happens after they do their hands-on images, videos, and walkthroughs, that is? What happens is they start sending the beast around the the office. So here we have a full gallery comparing the iPhone and the BlackBerry Bold. Head to head images comparing size, UI, web browser (though that one's not quite fair since the Bold's web browser ain't anywhere near complete yet), and of course media capabilities.

Also after the break, a video walkthrough of the two devices. We've made fun of RIM's claim that the Bold isn't an iClone and now that I'm looking at the two devices side by side on my desk, that fun-making is half-true. Yes, they're different, but the metallic bezel around the edge of a glossy black face sure says "iPhone" to me.

More thoughts and comparisons after the break. What are you waiting for? Read on!

I'm starting to think I really do have clout around this interweb thing (I can dream)

First, Installer.app received a search feature after I complained about the lack of it in my review. Now, my other complaint, the slight hesitation after installing new programs that sends you back to your unlock screen, has been fixed. It now quickly relaunches your Home Screen to seamlessly load the newly downloaded programs, which essentially makes Installer.app and its functions even more integrated into the iPhone.

WinPwn, the Pwnage tool for Windows, has finally left beta and is now available for official release. WinPwn 1.0 claims to be much more stable than previous beta releases and includes many bug fixes and new features. WinPwn is an incredibly safe and powerful way of jailbreaking your iPhone. It can jailbreak any firmware and the folks over at Pwnage believe that it will eventually replace the likes of iLiberty+ and ZiPhone.